I actually have two dieting questions:

1. When people give you foods as a gift, i.e. a marshmallow filled chocolate bunny what do you do? I don't want to turn it down, but I dont' want to eat it (although I did). Do you just take it and throw it away, give it away or just exhibit a little self-control?

2. Anyone else a stress/emotion eater? I am...big time!! Totally blew the diet today...in a big way. Work got to me, some other stuff got to me and now, a lot of food later I'm feeling awfully guilty. We won't even discuss what I ate. My question is, how does one overcome stress eating? Anyone have any tips? I'd GREATLY appreciate it. You have no idea how much I'd appreciate it.

I'm slowly raising my hand...I am a stress eater (did a lot of stress eating today).

My family, particularly my husband's side, spend a lot of time around the table. All socializing is centered around lunch, brunch, dinner, desserts...get the idea?

When we married, I was accustomed to eating on the run, walking almost everywhere (I'm from NYC...so walking was a daily routine). All of a sudden I found myself trenched in foods and not just any foods...GOOD gourmet quality foods.

So, now that I want to reclaim my inner diva, I have to say, "Thanks, but no thanks."

Vy, don't beat yourself up. I goofed today too. But ya know what? I'm getting up tomorrow and I'm going to hit the ground running. I'm treating my relationship with food, like anyone else would treat their addiction:

1. I am trying to stay far away from treat and snacks
2. I try to keep myself busy during the times that everyone else is snacking or eating (knitting has been a great distraction for me).
3. I have my skinny jeans in my mind at all times and remember that I do NOT want to spend another summer wishing I had stuck it out.

You can do it! Dust yourself off, take my hand and let's get back on that bike.

I know exactly what you're going through. I have been struggling with emotional eating quite a bit lately. It's been my biggest setback since I started my new diet.

If you are a stress eater, it is probably best to give your food gifts away (or throw them away). I know that's incredibly hard to do, but I find that when I have something like that lying around, it is the first thing I go to when I am stress eating. I would end up eating that entire chocolate bunny if it was around when I am stress eating, so I've gotten to the point where I just cannot keep those things around. Day-to-day I can normally control myself and eat tiny portions at a time, but the day when I end up completely overeating always comes and I go straight to whatever delicious food I can find.

I am always looking for advice on avoiding emotional eating, so I'm glad you posted this. If it makes you feel any better, I do find that when I have those days where I ruin my diet, it's never as detrimental to my weight loss as I think it's going to be. I almost always gain a good bit of water weight the next day, but that weight goes away quickly and I always get back on track faster than I expected.

I hope you get some good advice from this post! I know I certainly need some!

I'm a stress eater too. I would give it away if someone gave me a gift of chocolate...or that's what I'd recommend anyhow...whether I would or not in such a circumstance is a different question. But I certainly think, if you're eating healthy generally, it's not a problem to just keep the gift - everything in moderation!

Thanks guys I guess we'll figure it out some day. It's just kind of funny; Yesterday morning a friend of mine, Pam, made the comment that she was having a bad diet week but I was doing really well. Well, that wasn't true by noon. I guess it's all about the self-control or something.

I made sure to give my mind the jedi mind trick and not tell myself I had to eat less on my healthy eating journey. I tell myself all I have to do is eat MORE fruits and vegtables. Its ok to stress eat a handful of carrots or apples or an orange right. I also put myself on a 12 hour eating restiction. If i take my first bite of brekfast at 0500 then my last bite of dinner is at 1700 or 5 pm. Its all new so I have no results but like it was already said Get up take a step re-pete..become an emotional walker eventually you will become an emotional runner then look out. Good luck its a fun journey.

I have to refuse food-gifts outright or I lose self control completely. my mom knows and offers healthy food gifts, and at work I try to just pass things up completely.

See, my problem yesterday really started with a bad morning at work. Then it was lunch time. Or as I like to call it, left over pizza time (only one slice though). Then, ofcourse I ate the marshmallow chocolate bunny I was given.

Honestly, even though I did cheat...a lot. I logged everything into FitDay and it was bad, but not as bad as I thought. Mind you, my weight has gone up, but I think part of that is I've eaten ALOT of sodium the last few days. Who knows.

Sounds soooo very familiar.

I know exactly what you mean about the gifts thing.

Easter Sunday tomorrow, so the chocolate will just be pouring in D:

I'm also a stress eater. Any time I worry in excess or get upset, I immediately turn to food. Most of the time I will eat just one bad meal (double cheeseburger meal from McD's, for example), but sometimes I will just snack on junk like chips and candy all throughout the day. Luckily, most of my family and friends are now aware that I am trying to lose weight and don't put me in situations like the one you described. My mom replaced my usual Easter candy with other stuff this year

I don't usually refuse food gifts because it can seem ungracious to the gift giver (unless someone tells me ahead of time and then I can say, "Oh please don't bother...no, no really...I'm trying to lose weight." I got given an enormous chocolate bunny for Easter, and I gave it to my neighbors' little girl. She was delighted with it. My co-worker also repeatedly offers me chocolate. My rule is that I can have one piece of candy a day, so if I haven't had anything else I will sometimes take it (I adore chocolate). He is really skinny and athletic though, so I will also say laughingly, "Hey, we can't all eat like you do!"

The problem, now that I have almost completely gotten junk food eating under control (not always the cravings, but that's another story), is that I end up still eating too much--except now I eat too much of the non-junk-food category. For example, a second helping of whatever I ate at dinner, a second bowl of cereal, etc. I don't eat junk any more, but calories are calories!

I also find that I eat more when I'm very stressed and tired. When I'm super-tired, I keep thinking that I need to take in calories to give me strength.

Anyone have ideas/suggestions?

I know anytime I feel like falling prey to stress eating it takes some time to remember that it's not what I'm eating - it's what's eating me

It helps to remember, too, that I didn't get this big overnight so I ain't gonna get to that ideal weight overnight either. Having friends like all of you who post so honestly is a big help! Thanks for being there!

If the person knows I am dieting and gives me candy gifts I don't accept them. I tell them "you know I'm dieting, are you trying to sabatoge me?" Normally after that they take it back or don't give it to me.

I am a big stress eater so I wanted to do "The Fat Smash Diet" by Ian Smith. You have to do a 9-day detox (you are actually detoxing from bad foods - white sugar, flour, etc. but you eat fruits, veggies, oatmeal, beans, brown rice, etc.). The purpose of the detox is to get your cravings under control. I took a week off from my job (big stressor since I am a supervisor) and my husband was out of town and was able to do the 9-day detox with no problem. I've gone 3-weeks with no sweets at all and have lost 10 lbs so far. I know everyone can't do this but my point is that maybe you need to try to get away from your stressors until you can get your eating under control. Once I came back to work and the stress, I didn't go to food when I was stressed out. Good luck.

i would accept a food gift.
as for stress eating, i'm not one of those people... but i've been quite sad lately, and i stopped caring about how i was eating... so i did eat more than i normally would.

This is kind of off topic, but I was reading this and it reminded of a type of a behavior I sometimes experience that's sort of similar.

It's not stress-related eating but when I'm on some sort of a diet(normally when I'm just really strict on what I eat and hardcore with cardio) I'll come to a night where I'm like starving-- way hungrier than I've been for a while, so I will naturally eat a lot more than normal to satiate myself, but I don't know why that happens or what I should eat to make it go away so I find myself eating way more than I should be at those points.

Luckily it only happens when I've done a lot of cardio and have been dieting a lot, I haven't really been doing the latter to an extent lately but am probably gonna start up again soon.

-Ryan

Funny, you don't give a bottle of booze as a gift to someone with a drinking problem.

Interesting, I was just about to post about emotional eating when I saw this thread.

I'm trying to figure this out too as well, and I think part of it in my case at least is that I treat food like a companion. It's one of the reasons that I find it very difficult to watch my favorite TV shows or a good DVD flick without having a nice slice of meatlovers pizza and chicken strips dipped in honey mustard to keep me company. This desire is especially compounded when you feel like you're all alone in the world, and if there's no one to reach out to to help share your burden or stress, well, there's always the food.

I'm finding this to be an extremely hard mentality to get away from, and to me it all seems to come from my tendency to personify food.

People do this to me at work all the time. Be it Birthday parties with the massive sheet cake or random acts of kindness for helping them out. I try to make an effort in telling people that I am working to lose weight. They are starting to realize I'm not interested in sweets.

--
Jason Tucker
GeekFit Podcast
http://www.geekfit.com

Yesterday I went out to lunch with my dad and was offered a free sample of ice cream. I politely said 'no thanks' to the woman and she rolled her eyes at me and gave me the fakest smile ever. (she was one of those grandma-types that is offended when you don't eat a whole deep fried chicken with mayo and chocolate syrup) I was pretty irritated.

Then, I realized that might have been the first free thing I've ever turned down, so I gave myself a pat on the back.